Friday's Forgotten Books, November 2, 2012

Anthony Ambrogio is the author of YOU'RE NEXT: LOSS OF IDENTITY IN THE HORROR FILM, contributes to MIDNIGHT MARQUEE, and is the editor of CORRIDORS, a literary magazine.

This past October, while staying on Chincoteague Island in
Virginia, I picked up, for free, at the public library there, a battered copy
of THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL, which I had never read. I did see the movie back when
it came out (as I had also seen but never read ROSEMARY’S BABY and THE STEPFORD
WIVES), and I thought it was okay, but that was a long time ago, so I thought
I’d check out the novel. What struck me about the book was that, if it were
written today, Ira Levin could never get away with the rather slow pace that he
uses to begin the book. I had to dutifully plug through the first 15 or so
pages describing the Nazis meeting at a Japanese restaurant in South America before
things really got going. But, once things did, it was a pretty gripping
narrative—so much so that I put BOYS on my Netflix queue so I could re-evaluate
the movie.

You can see from the novel how it was probably written with
a screenplay in mind (by that time, Levin must have known that anything he
wrote would be snapped up by Hollywood), but my recollection was that the
finished product wasn’t so good. Back in 1978, when the movie was released, I
didn’t think that Gregory Peck made a convincing Nazi, and I thought Laurence
Olivier made only a half-convincing Nazi-hunter. That may be because I was
convinced, in the 1970s, that Olivier used the same strange accent whether he
was playing a Dutch professor (DRACULA), a Nazi (MARATHON MAN), a Nazi-hunter (here),
or a Jewish cantor (THE JAZZ SINGER). (Maybe I was being unfair; maybe they all
spoke alike because they all hailed from the same area.)

SPOILER ALERT. If you have never read/seen THE BOYS FROM
BRAZIL and are unfamiliar with its plot and various surprises, you may want to
stop reading now. However, at this late date, I don’t think I’m giving anything
away if I disclose that BOYS, which plays like a puzzle (why does Mengele want his six assassins to murder 94 65-year-old
non-entities, 94 civil servants in various European and North American
countries?), finally explains itself by revealing that Mengele has succeeded in
cloning 94 Hitlers and placing the babies in homes that duplicate the family
structure of Hitler’s own youth, with the intention that—by replicating key
events in the original’s life (like having his much older father die when he is
14)—several of them will grow into the spitting, shouting, hating, demagogic
image of the Fuhrer.

A friend of mine objected to the central premise of the
story: “My main problem with THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL is that Mengele's plot is
completely nonsensical. Why would anybody, even a Nazi, want to clone 94
Hitlers spread out in countries all over the world? Didn't it occur to them
that an American Hitler, or a British Hitler, or a French Hitler, isn't
necessarily going to be a good thing for Germany. I know it's a thriller, and
thrillers are allowed a lot of latitude in the plausibility department. But, at
the very least, you should be able to follow the reasoning of the Master
Villain, no matter how absurd his plot is. In BOYS FROM BRAZIL, I just didn't
get Mengele's reasoning. To be fair, the other Nazis in the movie—the sensible
Nazis, I suppose you could call them—thought his plan was as crazy as I did.”

But my friend is missing the point.

Mengele’s plan is to “save” the Aryan race by creating
another Hitler. So he plants his 94 clones in Aryan countries or with Aryan
(white) parents in countries with “mixed” populations. The idea is that one or
more of these kids will grow up to champion the cause of the white (Aryan)
race. I don’t think it’s so odd for him to believe that, whichever Fascist
comes to power in whatever country, he will be good for Germany and white
countries everywhere. After all, at the time that Hitler ruled Germany, the
Italians (who had developed Fascism first) had Mussolini, and the Spanish had
Franco, both of whom were sympathetic to and supporters of Hitler’s aims and
goals. Many other countries had their own home-grown brown- or black- or
whatever-color shirts. (Oswald Mosley upheld the Fascist cause in Great Britain
in the 1930s, as did other people in other places.) It wasn’t all that hard for
the Third Reich to get “right-thinking French and denizen of other occupied
countries to jump on the Nazi bandwagon.

Mengele’s plan (perhaps not spelled out clearly in the
movie—or, perhaps, even in the book) was to create some kind of Pan-Aryan
paradise across the world. In the book, Liberman says that biology and family
environment are not enough; the social conditions (such as those that existed
in Weimar Germany) must be just right if a Hitler is to come to power. This is
another reason for Mengele’s number of 94—to increase the chances of the boy
having the right combination of all three things. There’s more talk in the book
than in the film about the success rate of his experiment—what percentage of
the boys will become the Fuhrer that Mengele wants.

At any rate, I was able to suspend my disbelief without
difficulty in regard to Mengele’s plot as conceived and delineated by Levin.
(On the other hand, I thought that the disowning of Mengel’s scheme by the Germans
in charge was an unnecessary contrivance.) I suppose it all depends on what we
can stand, but I was able to put up with the major contrivance without much
difficulty.

It was instructive for me to re-see the movie after finally
reading the book. The film alters the beginning of the novel—that part that I
said was rather slow and wouldn’t be stood for by a reader today—by speeding up
events, making them more (dare I say this?) “cinematic”—letting us see the Nazi
get-together from the point of view of the young Jewish American who’s trying
to keep tabs on them. In fact, the first five minutes or so of the film are
practically wordless as the young man observes the Nazis gathering and rushes
to shadow them.

The film itself follows the book pretty closely, though it
does compress certain things and allow the story to proceed at a faster clip.
(It avoids some of the awkward “disguises” that Mengele assumes at the end,
first pretending to be Lieberman when he meets Wheelock, the adoptive father of
one of the Hitler clones, and then pretending to be Wheelock when Lieberman shows up.)

Ultimately, I don’t know if the picture is more than a two-and-a-half-star
film because of certain flaws inherent in the story and because of the casting,
which doesn’t really work. I understand that Gregory Peck probably wanted to
stretch his acting muscles by playing a bad guy, but he’s not the best choice
for Josef Mengele. (And, of course, he has to speak with a “Choimin accent”
throughout, even when he’s obviously supposed to be speaking German to his
colleagues, when he wouldn’t have an
accent. Ditto Laurence Olivier’s Jacob Lieberman [based on actual Nazi-hunter
Simon Wiesenthal] with his European accent.)

Two items in the plot—there because Levin wants them to be, probably
for thematic reasons—bothered me.

When Lieberman discovers Mengele’s plan to have the civil
servants killed, the “high command” or whatever it is (the post-War Nazi unit)
decides to abort Mengele’s mission. But single-minded Mengele determines to
soldier on without anyone else’s help. I guess I can understand why this has to
happen—to set up the ultimate confrontation between Mengele and Lieberman—but
it, in one way, diminishes the general Nazi threat by making it more the
single-minded action of one man. And that final confrontation between Mengele
and Lieberman involves several dangerous Dobermans. Again, I kind of understand
why the dogs must figure in the plot because the young boy who’s one of the
Hitler clones has to have a part in this confrontation, and the dogs become his
“weapon.” Still, I always felt that the dog scenario was a kind of cop-out—I
guess because it wasn’t the sort of Big Climax that I was looking or hoping for.

The film did play better this time than I remember it in
1978, and Levin’s ideas are ingenious (albeit dimmed by 35 years of cloning in
fiction and real life), and I think both book and film are worth reading/seeing,
at least once, and would make an interesting companion piece to MARATHON MAN,
book and film, which are of the same vintage.

And you have to hand it to Levin. He came up with wild but
plausible and downright scary stories that were all different: a coven of
witches conspiring to insure the birth of the anti-Christ, a bunch of men
conspiring to replace their spouses with perfect robotic substitutes, a group
of Nazis conspiring to recreate Hitler. (Notice, however, that conspiracy figures prominently in each
novel.)

In the dénouement of BOYS, Lieberman prevents the Jewish
Defense League-like organization from hunting down and killing the Hitler
clones, arguing that they are just children and that the Hitler hunters would
be no better than the Nazis who killed six million. But both the book and the
movie add (different) codas, suggesting that the cloning is working and that
the Wheelock boy whom we’ve seen might very well grow up into the Nazi we fear,
pretty much negating Liberman’s message of tolerance and kindness and
non-intervention. I have no idea of this outcome represents Levin’s pessimistic
view of the world or if he was just following a trend (that, one could argue, he started in ROSEMARY’S BABY) of having
the bad guys win. In ROSEMARY’S BABY, Rosemary’s acceptance of her devil child
is a maternal action and one that grows organically out of the plot. One might
even be able to argue that the dire fate of the protagonist in THE STEPFORD
WIVES makes sense, given the thrust of the story. But the tacked-on “downbeat
ending” of BOYS is more perfunctory (as were the endings of too many movies
that followed in the wake of ROSEMARY’S BABY’s success); it doesn’t need to be
there.

Ed Gorman is the author of the Dev Conrad series of political thrillers as well as the Sam McCain series. He also edits anthologies, writes westerns and short stories, and is generally busy here.

One way you can tell you're getting old is when the good girl in the Gold Medal novel appeals to you more than the femme fatale.Somebody
wrote me about a review I'd written a few years ago of Bruno Fischer's
House of Flesh. In my review I was agreeing with science fiction writer
Dave Bischoff's contention that the book is a mystery that combines
gothic elements with some really horrorific moments. It's one of
Fischer's best novels, a very sleek, dark whodunit that lags only at the
very end because he runs out of suspects. There is a particularly nasty
scene wherein dogs set upon the remains of a dead horse, the carcass
having rotted before they got to it. The word "flesh" has multiple
meanings in the novel. And nasty is the operative word for long sections
of the book. Before
responding to the letter I decided to look through the book again. Held
up very well. But as I read it I realized that Fischer had made the
good girl so appealing--smart, funny, winsome, clean cut--that the
protagonist seems sort of dotty to obsess over a rather odd woman whom
he finds unattractive (but inexplicably sexy of course), aggravatingly
mysterious and frequently irritable.I
know, I know--this is noir land where gonadic response to fate is not
only standard but mandatory, thanks to the Law of The Crotch as writ
large and eternal by James M. Cain.The
only way I can explain this misjudgement is my age. But an evening with
the sweet, amusing good girl promises so much more fun than a few hours
in the clutches of The Dragon Lady...By the time they plant me Ill probably be reading those old-fashioned Harlequin romances. The clean ones.

-----The Evil Days by Bruno Fischer

Bruno
Fischer had one of those careers you can't have any more. There's no
market for any of it. He started out as editor and writer for a
Socialist newspaper, shifted to terror pulps when the newspaper started
failing, became a successful and respected hardcover mystery novelist in
the Forties and early Fifties, and finally turned to Gold Medal
originals when the pb boom began. His GMs sold in the millions. His
House of Flesh is for me in the top ten of all GMs.

Then for
reasons only God and Gary Lovisi understand, Fischer gave up writing and
became an editor for Colliers books. But he had one more book in him
and it turned out to be the finest of his long career.

Fischer
shared with Howard Fast (Fast when he was writing mysteries under his
pen names) a grim interest in the way unfulfilling jobs grind us down,
leave us soulless. Maybe this was a reflection of his years on the
Socialist newspaper. The soullessness features prominently in The Evil
Days because it is narrated by a suburban husband who trains to work
each day to labor as an editor in a publishing company where he is
considered expendable. Worse, his wife constantly reminds him (and not
unfairly) that they don't have enough money to pay their bills or find
any of the pleasures they knew in the early years of their marriage.
Fischer makes you feel the husband's helplessness and the wife's anger
and despair.

The A plot concerns the wife finding jewels and
refusing to turn them in. A familiar trope, yes, but Fischer makes it
work because of the anger and dismay the husband feels when he sees how
his wife has turned into a thief. But ultimately he goes along with her.
Just when you think you can scope out the rest of the story yourself,
Fischer goes all Guy de Maupassant on us. Is the wife having an affair?
Did she murder her lover? Is any of this connected to the jewels? What
the hell is really going on here?

Sometimes we forget how well
the traditional mystery can deal with the social problems of an era and
the real lives of real people. The hopelessness and despair of these
characters was right for their time of the inflation-dazed Seventies.
But it's just as compelling now as it was then when you look at the
unemployment numbers and the calm reassurances by those who claim to
know that the worst is yet to come.

A wily little novel that rattled me the first time I read it and rattles me still on rereading.

THE RULES OF THE GAME by Georges Simenon

(Review by Deb)

If
you handed this book to someone without telling them it was written by
Georges Simenon, I think they would guess it was written by John O'Hara
or John Marquand or one of the other mid-century American writers who
focused on the interior lives of middle-class men reaching roadblocks in
their attempts to navigate the social structures of their suburban
worlds.Certainly, a reader
would not guess that this book was written by the creator of that
quintessential Frenchman, Inspector Maigret.

Published
in 1955 and written during a period when Simenon lived (and wrote
several books set) in America, THE RULES OF THE GAME concerns a few
pivotal days in the life of Walter Higgins, the manager of a large
grocery store in Williamson, a prosperous Connecticut suburb.For the second year in a row, Walter has applied to join the local country club.The previous year, he was black-balled; this year, assures the friend who sponsors him, he is a shoo-in for membership.To
Walter, membership in the country club means he has arrived, that he is
part of the group that runs things in Williamson, that his Little
League coaching,
regular chuch attendance, membership in the Rotary Club and VFW (he
served in WWII), and volunteer work with the school board has been
noticed and rewarded.It also means he can let go of the memories of his difficult childhood in the rough, working-class town of Old Bridge.

But
again Walter is black-balled and this time his life comes tumbling down
with the imploding of his expectations. Despite the support of his wife
and perceptive oldest daughter, Walter cannot adjust to the notion that
people who control the admissions process do not think he is "worthy"
of country club membership.The scales have fallen from his eyes and at last he sees the social strata of Williamson and his place in it.He
realizes that everyone plays a game in this social interaction, but
that he has failed to understand the rules (or even be aware that a game
is being played).

This
new awareness leads Walter to a brave act: Supporting a proposal to
raise local property taxes in order to build a new school that will
accommodate the town's growing population.There
are some remarkably timely exchanges at the school board meeting (or
perhaps it's just a case of "the more things change, the more they stay
the same") where the town's wealthiest citizens (and their proxies)
complain that the increase in taxes will hurt them the most, even though
they have recently been willing to pay much more to erect a new
building at the country club; while people on the other side of the
issue claim that the new schools are necessary to produce the sort of
educated workforce needed by the wealthy to run
their factories and other enterprises.

Worried
that his support of a tax increase will cause upper-class customers to
stop patronizing his supermarket, Walter spends a morning at work in a
state of near paranoia, fretting over every person who does (and does
not) come in to shop.Then a phone call summoning him back to Old Bridge leads Walter to confront his past and experience a "dark night of the soul."The
ending is, paradoxically, both happier and more cynical than we would
expect from an American writer covering the same material.We have a sense that Walter will now be better able to function in the society he has chosen, but we do not know what the price
of playing the game will be for him and his family.

12 comments:

I read HOUSE OF FLESH earlier this year and thought it run-of-the-mill. You're right about the femme fatale. I thought she was repellant and absurd. I was stunned that the protagonist was obsessing over her. The story is excessively Gothic (how can anyone not see that?) and probably too familiar for someone like me who's read too many of the real thing to find a noir spin of Gothic to be innovative.

Interesting, thoughtful review of Boys from Brazil. Funnily enough I reviewed it myself over the summer (as part of a series of posts on books which begat films), and made the point – not terribly original, I'm sure – that Levin's big ideas are like perfect high concept movie pitches – which is why so many of his books became movies.

And this...

“It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” ― C.S. Lewis

Patricia (Patti) Abbott

Contact me

at aa2579@wayne.edu

About Me

Patricia Abbott is the author of more than 125 stories that have appeared online, in print journals and in various anthologies. She is the author of two ebooks, MONKEY JUSTICE and HOME INVASION and co-editor of DISCOUNT NOIR. She won a Derringer award for her story "My Hero." She lives outside Detroit.

CONCRETE ANGEL

Polis Books, 2015

CONCRETE ANGEL

An atmospheric and eagerly awaited debut novel from acclaimed crime writer Patricia Abbott, set in Philadelphia in the 1970s about a family torn apart by a mother straight out of Mommie Dearest, and her children who are at first victims but soon learn they must fight back to survive. Eve Moran has always wanted “things” and has proven both inventive and tenacious in getting and keeping them. Eve lies, steals, cheats, swindles, and finally commits murder, paying little heed to the cost of her actions on those who love her. Her daughter, Christine, compelled by love, dependency, and circumstance, is caught up in her mother’s deceptions, unwilling to accept the viciousness that runs in her mother's blood. Eve’s powers of seduction are hard to resist for those who come in contact with her toxic allure. It’s only when Christine’s three-year old brother, Ryan, begins to prove useful to her mother, and she sees a pattern repeating itself, that Christine finds the courage and means to bring an end to Eve’s tyranny.